THE POWER OF ETHICS
IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Digital is rapidly becoming the norm, transforming our work and behaviour across all sectors. It is now embedded in business models, integrated with processes and practices as organisations move towards digital-as-usual businesses. While organisations employ technology to increase productivity and efficiency, the big elephant in the room is ‘’Ethics’’. Organisations must be mindful of the risks of unethical practices, whose adverse impact can be amplified by digital connectivity.

Technology itself is neither good nor bad. It is the way it is being used that determines the ethical implications. Organisations need to be accountable to ensure responsible applications of technologies and their business interests should not take precedence over public’s interest. The CFO, the Finance Team and auditors play a crucial role in the organisation to ensure that there is proper governance over technology and that these technologies are used in a manner that does not call into question ethical practices. IT and Digital teams will need to take this into account when co-designing systems with Finance.

At ACCA’s Ethics Film Festival 2019, we will explore the “ABCD” of Ethics in a digital environment: AI, Blockchain, Cybersecurity and Data Governance; as we explore and discuss good practices and guidelines in the responsible adoption of technology and what accountants, financial and IT professionals of the future need to know.

PAST YEAR FILMS

ABOUT THE FILM

Not since the invention of the Internet itself has there been such a controversial technological creation as Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s early pioneers sought to blur the lines of sovereignty and the financial status quo. After years of underground development, Bitcoin grabbed the attention of a curious public – as well as the ire of the regulators the technology had subverted. Yet after landmark arrests of prominent cyber criminals, Bitcoin, which actually surged on election night, still faces its most severe adversary, the very banks it was built to destroy.

PANELIST & AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

ABOUT THE FILM

A good movie gives you a ticket to a secret world and Big Men delivers again and again, taking you into rooms you have no business entering. You’ll eavesdrop on meetings about oil deals worth billions of dollars and watch heavily armed militants preparing to strike. It’s a fast-paced tour through the high-powered world of African oil deals – a quest for money and power and influence that affects us all.

The film’s central story follows a small group of American explorers at Dallas-based oil company Kosmos Energy. Between 2007 and 2011, with unprecedented, independent access, Big Men’s two-person crew filmed inside the oil company as Kosmos and its partners discovered and developed the first commercial oil field in Ghana’s history.

Simultaneously the crew filmed in the swamps of Nigeria’s Niger Delta, following the exploits of a militant gang to reveal another side of the economy of oil: people trying to profit in any way possible, because they’ve given up on waiting for the money to trickle down.

So what happens when a group of hungry people discover a massive and exquisitely rare pot of gold in one of the poorest places on earth? Watch your back: it’s every company, government and man for himself and everyone wants to be BIG.

PANELIST & AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

ABOUT THE FILM

The Price We Pay is inspired by Brigitte Alepin’s book La Crise fiscale qui vient. Director Harold Crooks (who co-directed Surviving Progress with Mathieu Roy) blows the lid off the dirty world of corporate malfeasance with this incendiary documentary about the dark history and dire present-day reality of big-business tax avoidance, which has seen multinationals depriving governments of trillions of dollars in tax revenues by harboring profits in offshore havens. Tax havens, originally created by London bankers in the 50s, today put over half the world’s stock of money beyond reach of public treasuries.

Nation states are being reshaped by this offshoring of the world’s wealth. Tax avoidance by big corporations and the wealthy – citizens of nowhere for tax purposes – is paving the way to historic levels of inequality and placing the tax burden on the middle class and the poor. Crusading journalists, tax justice campaigners and former finance and technology industry insiders speak frankly about the accelerating trends that are carrying the Western world to an unsustainable future.

PANELIST & AUDIENCE FEEDBACK

ABOUT ETHICS FILM FESTIVAL

The ACCA Singapore Ethics Film Festival aims to start a movement to bring together a community of like-minded professionals to discuss and address ethical issues embedded in the accountancy profession through films.